A study explores how videos from body and dashboard cameras affect viewer judgment. The use of dashboard and body cameras in police forces has increased over time. However, little is known about how these devices influence viewer perception. Broderick L. Turner and colleagues recruited 1,916 participants and conducted seven experiments using both staged and real police videos. Participants viewed footage of real incidents, staged incidents involving actors, as well as footage that was manipulated to alter visual indicators of the wearer's physical presence, including identifying information about the wearer and scenario outcomes. In each experiment, viewers of the body-camera footage assigned lower intentionality ratings than viewers who watched the dashboard footage. In an additional experiment, potential jurors who read a police report of an incident and watched a corresponding video from body-camera footage provided lower intentionality ratings than those who read the report and viewed the dashboard footage; participants who only read the report provided lower ratings than participants who saw any footage. The findings suggest that body-camera footage may influence judicial decisions, according to the authors.
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Article #18-05928: "Body camera footage leads to lower judgments of intent than dash camera footage," by Broderick L. Turner, Eugene M. Caruso, Mike Dilich, and Neal J. Roese.
MEDIA CONTACT: Broderick L. Turner, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; tel: 415-574-6464; email: broderick.turner@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences